After two decades in Gotham, indie publishing icon Soft Skull Press is heading to Berkeley. As the New York Press writes, "While it might not be the end of Soft Skull altogether, by leaving New York, the press will never be the same. After all, Soft Skull is the quintessential New York City indie press." New York Press details the imprint's history, from its early days in a Greenwich Village copy shop, publishing books like Lee Ranaldo's 1995 Road Movies, through its Downtown heyday, when a motley mix of musicians, activists, and authors hung out in its basement office and produced books like

David Rosenthal, who left his post at Simon & Schuster last summer, has been hired by Penguin USA to lead a new imprint. According to an article at the Times, the position will generate "competition between Penguin and Simon & Schuster," as Rosenthal pursues authors he has worked with in the past, who have included Bob Dylan and Bob Woodward. The editor himself sounds prepared to mix things up. "I’m going to make lots of trouble,” he said. “They’re going to let me go after the kind of—I wouldn’t say quirky—but the peculiar stuff that I sometimes like. What they want very much is for me

Polarizing French author Michel Houellebecq has won the Prix Goncourt for his fifth novel, La carte et le territoire, though the book was denounced earlier this year by Goncourt Academy member Tahar Ben Jelloun. In an interview in the most recent Paris Review, Houellebecq says of his critics: "They hate me more than I hate them. What I do reproach them for isn’t bad reviews. It is that they talk about things having nothing to do with my books . . . they caricature me so that I’ve become a symbol of so many unpleasant things—cynicism, nihilism, misogyny."

This year, the words staycation and

WWD details the rivalry between Hugo Lindgren, the new editor of the New York Times Magazine, and his former boss, New York magazine's Adam Moss. Lindgren asks: “Did you see this week’s issue [of New York]? They had one of our writers in there. They had pretty much our subject matter across the magazine. It’s totally good, though. What makes it good? Why are the Mets and Yankees spending so much money to put the best team out on the field? Because they don’t want to be the second best team in New York."

The New Republic is turning ninety-six years old this week, and to celebrate they're asking

Slate has published Mick Jagger's rambling reaction to Keith Richards's new memoir, Life. Jagger apparently accidentally sent the typewritten, stream-of-consciousness screed to journalist Bill Wyman instead of the Stones' bassist of the same name who oversees the band's archives. Is it a prank, a parody, or the legitimate scoop of the current blog cycle? Slate isn't saying. Whatever the case, it makes for entertaining reading, as Jagger writes: "It is said of me that I act above the rest of the band and prefer the company of society swells. Would you rather have had a conversation with Warren

We're four days into National Novel Writing Month, the annual project that encourages procrastinating would-be authors to plow ahead and pen a 50,000 word novel from scratch in thirty days (quantity over quality is the rule), and fifty-thousand words have already been spilled about the merits of participating. At Salon, Laura Miller criticizes the endeavor, writing "the last thing the world needs is more bad books," but Jacket Copy's Carolyn Kellogg disagrees, as does Ron Hogan at Beatrice, and some folks who participate in NaNoWrMo, lodging their anti-Miller complaints on their blogs and

Why did indie publisher Soft Skull Press close its New York offices after seventeen years in the city? The Observer investigates.

As the debate about Amazon's sponsorship of the Best Translated Book Awards continues, the online bookselling giant has announced the first release of its new translation imprint, AmazonCrossing: Guinean author Tierno Monénembo's The King of Kahel, a novel based on the life of Olivier de Sanderval, an early colonizer of West Africa.

New York magazine has taken the iPad plunge with its new app, which integrates print content with live feeds from their blogs.

Tonight,

George W. Bush will be the headliner at this year's Miami Book Fair. On November 14, he'll give a straight-shooting talk about his memoir, Decision Points, which comes out a week from today. In the Drudge Report's exclusive preview, we learn that Bush's book begins with a trope found in so much of great literature, namely, a drinking binge: "Can you remember the last time you didn't have a drink?"

MobyLives airs some behind-the-scenes grumbling from the National Book Critics Circle Award, posting this remark from a dispirited anonymous board member: "Things are just as problematic at the NBCC

Last week, Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson announced that he was withdrawing his imprint's books from the Best Translated Book awards because the "predatory and thuggish" Amazon.com is sponsoring the contest. Open Letter publisher Chad Post, who secured the Amazon funding for the prize, has responded to Johnson, writing that the judges may go ahead and award a Melville House book anyway, and wonders if Johnson is "also withdrawing support from PEN America, the 92nd St. Y, and all of these other organizations that have received funding from Amazon."

Novelist Arundhati Roy’s Delhi house

Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson is withdrawing his imprint's books from the Best Translated Book Award (which Melville House won last year), because Amazon is now sponsoring the prize. Johnson cites the web giants's "predatory and thuggish practices,” and writes, "Taking money from Amazon is akin to the medical researchers who take money from cigarette companies."



Cultural critics fond of the long form, take note: Condensed reviews are gaining momentum. At the Huffington Post, Kimberly Brooks has introduced "Haiku Reviews," which is, we have to say, false advertising, since the

The Millions links to a previously unpublished story by David Foster Wallace, which a few years ago was circulated samizdat-style and is now on Tumblr. The story, presumably from the author's forthcoming posthumous novel, The Pale King, opens with a boy who wants "to press his lips to every square inch of his body," hinting at a tragic mix of self-love and overwhelming isolation in ways that only DFW can.

Daniel Ellsberg, the man famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers in 1971 (and the subject of a recent PBS documentary, "The Most Dangerous Man in America"), has just signed a contract

In an article about his literary magazine, Electric Literature, Brooklyn-based editor Andy Hunter offers an insightful meditation on how to succeed in contemporary publishing: "People often refer to Electric Literature as an 'online magazine.' In reality, online is the only place we do not publish." The innovative publisher just released its latest app, produced with author Stephen Elliott for his excellent memoir The Adderall Diaries (film rights for Elliott's book were recently optioned by James Franco).

Elliott's Rumpus Book Club unveils its latest selections, which include Rumpus Women